Mr Carvalho, agreeing to a request that he agree to us calling Our Tree "The Kangaroo Valley Carvalho Pine", wrote:

Planting trees and effort for conservation our nature is one of Haburas Foundation mission that I'm belongs to. Hope your effort will bring inspiration for politician in every country that today is very slowly moving and less focus to preservation of our nature and not invested much resources and effort for environmental programs. Haburas Foundation has been blacklisted by Australia Government because the involvement in sign a declaration letter on September-October 2004 to protest unfair negotiation between Australian Government and East Timor Government on the cases of Timor gap. Australian aid agency (AUSaid) has been resigned Haburas proposal for environmental education program, because our involvement in declaration. We feel this attitude is violating our right (freedom of expression). But is okay, we will use small resources and maximum effort to promote sustainable environmental management in this poorest country.

* Dec 14 2005: Have just returned from Sydney, where I attended recording sessions for a CD of my chamber music played by members of The Australia Ensemble. Brilliant! It will be released in 2006 by Tall Poppies Records.

Tall Poppies has released a CD called Electric Cello by cellist David Pereira. It includes a superb performance of my Welcome to the Hotel Turismo, for cello & CD, as well as pieces by Andrew Ford, Roger Smalley, Carl Vine and Nigel Westlake. Catalogue number: TP180. For more info, click here.

While in Sydney I also attended a Song Company concert that included several of my songs (The Elderly Elephant, Heather Frog, I'm a Slug, Nobody Cares Anymore and Lost Snail). The following review appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald on December 10:

A Free Range Christmas The Song Company Verbrugghen Hall, December 8 Reviewed by Peter McCallum Adults will enjoy this as something for the kids, while children will detect that undisguisable thread of coy adult humour throughout. Whether the kids will feel it is therefore special, or be left asking whether they are having fun yet, wasn't tested on Thursday because all the audience were the sort of people who could go anywhere without a proof-of-age card unless asking for a seniors concession. This made the singalong with Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer a little self-conscious but the Song Company again showed themselves not only unembarrassable, but brilliant. The balance, pitch discipline and control of timbre in the close harmony arrangements of songs by Frank Loesser (The Inch Worm and The Ugly Duckling), in Martin Wesley-Smith's cheeky cabaret-style songs (I'm a Slug and Nobody Cares Anymore), and in the animal noises (always good practice for singers), all performed with kindy Christmas concert actions, were superb. Such consummate skill so lightly worn. Also lightly worn is their erudition (in particular, that of the artistic director, Roland Peelman, who contributed witty arrangements of The 12 Days of Christmas among others). This incorporated 13th-century carols, Christmas folk songs from France and Czechoslovakia and esoteric nonsense traditions from Europe. There were also serious moments, notably from poems by prizewinners and participants in the Taronga Foundation Poetry Prize - Phillip Stapleton, Shaez Mortimer and Will Ulcher, who added contemporary concerns about the extinction of species and used the plight of animals in Baghdad zoos as a poignant indictment of war. Yet there is another way in which the Song Company's wassail embodies the Christmas spirit. As one of Australia's most outstanding music ensembles, they scrimp and save, helping young composers and spreading delight with an always-generous spirit which seems to say: "If you haven't got a penny, a halfpenny will do; if you haven't got a halfpenny then God bless you."

On Tuesday November 29, clarinettist Ros Dunlop and I presented my audio-visual piece Weapons of Mass Distortion at a seminar at the New South Wales Writers' Centre on the Australian Government's new sedition laws. Filled the bill perfectly. Since then we have seen the disgraceful race riots at Sydney's Cronulla Beach and elsewhere. While there are many causes, a significant one is, I believe, the attack on fundamental Australian values made by John Howard and his government during the past ten years. This has included lifting the lid on the expression of racist values, allowing right-wing shock-jocks free reign in pushing the government's agenda, including the demonisation of "people of Middle Eastern appearance". See this article by 2UE broadcaster and Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mike Carlton (from Crikey.com, Wed Dec 14 2005):

Alan Jones's week of ranting wog-baiting which preceded the Sydney riots was the most disgraceful episode of broadcasting I have encountered in my 40+ years in the media. It was vulgar, vicious and racist, and an unmistakable incitement to violence. "I'm the person that's led this charge here. Nobody wanted to know about North Cronulla, now it's gathered to this," he screeched, as listener after listener phoned to declare war on Muslims in general and Lebanese in particular. "A community show of force!" he shouted. Hitler's Brownshirts would have loved it. In a sea of radio filth, Jones's most disgusting act was to broadcast, and to repeat, the SMS phone message calling for violence: "Come to Cronulla this weekend to take revenge. This Sunday every Aussie in the shire get down to North Cronulla to support the leb and wog bashing day." That a broadcaster could trumpet such madness on air is beyond irresponsible. His furious encouragement of every racist ratbag who rang in was outrageous. To recall Stanley Baldwin's famous stab at the press barons, it was "power without responsibility; the prerogative of the harlot through the ages." Happily, though, we now have Phillip Ruddock's wonderful new sedition laws, which should be more than sufficient to deal with the matter. I quote from the Anti-Terrorism Bill (2) 2005, rushed through parliament just the other week: A person commits an offence [of sedition] if: (a) the person urges a group or groups (whether distinguished by race, religion, nationality or political opinion) to use force or violence against another group or other groups (as so distinguished); and, (b) the use of the force or violence would threaten the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth. Penalty: Imprisonment for 7 years. The sad thing is that no one in authority will take Jones on. Certainly not his mates Howard and Ruddock, who dote upon him as their trusted media megaphone. And certainly not the NSW state government of Morris Iemma, which lives in daily terror of upsetting the great man. So this nasty, hypocritical old harlot will continue to get away with it. With the results we have seen.

How about it, Mr Howard? Seven years for Mr Jones? Seems an open and shut case to me. If you do nothing then your hypocrisy will be even more staggering than it is now.

* Dec 2 2005: Was asked by The Sydney Morning Herald the other day for my thoughts, in 500 words, on "the impact on my art-form" of the sedition provisions in the Australian Government's proposed Anti-Terrorist Bill (No.2) 2005. I wrote:

Sedition laws serve as a potential weapon for the state to use against people it wishes to silence. We value Shostakovich's 10th Symphony partly because it stands up against Stalinist repression. Yet we are discouraging - through the sedition sections of the anti-terrorism bill - composers from creating works that challenge our government's policies. Peter Sculthorpe recently composed a string quartet sympathising with asylum-seekers in detention camps. Did he hope this work would cause in its audience alienation or disaffection towards ("urge disaffection against") the Government? If so, he could be accused of having "seditious intention". If his next string quartet sympathises with an Iraqi man who lost his children to indiscriminate bombing by the coalition of the willing, say, and if by playing it musicians give moral support to the group of "insurgents" to which that man now belongs and which is "engaged in armed hostilities against the Australian Defence Force", then Sculthorpe could go to jail for seven years. He might plead that his intention was to provide "aid of a humanitarian nature", but the onus would be on him to prove that. It is unlikely he would be charged, but the possibility is there. He would be encouraged to find inspiration in a safer subject. The Howard Government promises us these laws will not be used against artists. Is that a core or a non-core promise? And how do we know what future governments will do? Still, I think the impact of the proposed sedition laws on"art-music" composition will be slight. Not many composers engage in political subjects, and any perceived offence would be difficult to prove. However, the impact on music-theatre, songwriters and on audio-visual composition - where photographs, texts and video can be used with live and recorded music (or sound bites from politicians) - could be considerable. I recently created an audio-visual piece called Papua Merdeka that, in expressing concern for the plight of the West Papuan people, implicitly criticises the Indonesian armed forces for their brutality and the Australian Government for its support of Indonesia's "territorial integrity". From my layman's reading of the bill it seems that with this piece I'll be in the clear. But I'm not sure. Performers won't be sure, either. Why should they perform this piece and risk prosecution when they could perform Beethoven instead? Performers will avoid contentious pieces. Democracy demands dissent. Everyone in a democracy must be allowed, indeed encouraged, to express what they think: through a speech, a placard, a poem, a song, a sculpture, a painting, a novel, a video, an audio-visual work, participation in a demonstration and so on. Existing laws forbid inciting action that threatens the safety of citizens or the ability of governments to govern. Why, then, have sedition laws at all? In order to save democracy, must we destroy it?

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* Nov 21 2005: The Charisma concert last Thursday night, at which my Merry-Go-Round and Papua Merdeka were performed, plus works by Ros Bandt and Steve Ingham, went very well. A member of the audience wrote to Ros Dunlop:

I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your performance with Julia on Thursday evening. It was a program of strength, grace and beauty. Thank you and congratulations on presenting such meaningful works.

Have just received an email from Guitar Trek, who played my Songs & Marches at a Musica Viva concert on Saturday night in Springwood, NSW:

The concert went really well (about 400 people) and Songs & Marches got a great reception. The guitar players who were there all thought it was the best piece on the program - so there you go! We played the full version again without cuts and it seems to work just fine - maybe we played it a little better than the first performance ...

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* Nov 11 2005: Armistice Day, the 30th anniversary of the dismissal of Australia's Whitlam Government, and the 125th anniversary of the hanging of Ned Kelly - an appropriate day for me to make a submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee re the Anti-Terrorism Bill (No. 2) 2005; it said, in part:

Like others who have made a submission to this committee, I am alarmed at what seems to me to be the severe and un-necessary restriction of civil liberties entailed in this bill. Even if I were not extremely sceptical about the Government's motives here - based on its past mendacity - I would still object to, amongst other things, the loss of habeas corpus and presumption of innocence ... We in Australia do not have a Bill of Rights. Thus without stringent legal provisions to protect us from Government and/or bureaucratic abuse, none of us is safe. It is all very well to say, as many Australians do, that if you've got nothing to hide then you've got nothing to fear. Tell that to Ms Solon or any of the hundreds of other innocent victims of government ineptitude. The point here is that people are people, with personal strengths and weaknesses, axes to grind, a normal human propensity for making mistakes, and so on. We've seen how Government bureaucrats, frightened for their jobs, have kept silent as appalling injustice occurs (those who stand up and protest are denigrated on any grounds other than on the substance of their argument). We need watertight protection, not a bill that leaves us at the mercy of petty officialdom. We are bringing democracy, so we are told, to the people of Iraq, whether they want it or not, at the point of a gun. What kind of democracy are we exporting? Not the one that my father fought for in World War 2. Not the one that Sir Robert Menzies defended. Instead of safeguarding our freedoms, the Government is attacking them ... Woodrow Wilson wrote "The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it." This bill increases the Government's power over its citizens, simultaneously restricting, through the Sedition section, our right to object ... The hypocrisy of this bill is staggering. If we are so concerned about terrorism, then we should be objecting to the Indonesian army - "terrorists in uniform", as Sister Susan Connelly calls them - in its campaign of terror in, for example, West Papua. But we are officially co-operating with it, effectively endorsing its methods. We should be urging that those responsible for the outrages in East Timor in 1999 be brought to justice. But we are silent. When this bill has been passed, citizens of Australia will have fewer liberties than the terrorists of the TNI ...

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* Nov 6 2005: Did a concert last night in the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery with Charisma (Ros Dunlop, clarinets, and Julia Ryder, cello). They played Merry-Go-Round and Papua Merdeka as well as new pieces by Ros Bandt and Steve Ingham. Large audience, great reception.

next Charisma concert: 7pm Thursday November 17 2005; Uniting Church, 395 Oxford St, Paddington, Sydney; tickets: $20, $15 (concession); bookings: 02 9810 2253; program includes new works by Ros Bandt and Stephen Ingham plus my Papua Merdeka and Merry-Go-Round

diary entry: 7.30pm Tues Jan 31 2006: a concert by the Kioloa Harp Ensemble, Kangaroo Valley Hall, Kangaroo Valley; tickets: $20, $10 (concession); bookings: 02 4465 1299; program includes new works for seven harps by Ross Edwards, Andrew Schultz, Larry Sitsky and me as well as arrangements of works by Bach, Lecuona, Mendelssohn and Salzedo; members of the ensemble are Alice Giles (director), Ingrid Bauer, Lily Dixon, Genevieve Lang, Hilary Manning, Tegan Peemoeller and Laura Tanata

Guitar Trek will play my piece Songs and Marches on Sat Nov 19 for the Blue Mountains Music Society in Springwood, NSW

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* Oct 28 2005: Just got back from the most recent Tekee Tokee Tomak Tour. Clarinettist Ros Dunlop and I gave concerts in England (London, Newcastle, Sandwich (Kent)), Holland (Rotterdam), Ireland (Cork), Lithuania (Vilnius), and Scotland (Glasgow). Went very well, with ecstatic reactions from some audience members.

Before Europe, Ros did solo gigs in the USA, premiering my new audio-visual piece Papua Merdeka, for bass clarinet & computer, about the plight of the people of West Papua. Program note:

The 1969 UN-sanctioned "Act of Free Choice" that handed the Dutch colony West Papua to Indonesia was a sham, an act of no choice for the West Papuan people. Since then, Indonesia has treated the territory as it did East Timor, with rampant human rights abuse as well as exploitation, in collusion with America and others, of West Papua's rich natural resources. This piece is about the West Papuan people and their thirst for freedom. Almost all the sources I've used in creating it were begged, borrowed or stolen from others. They include Agence France Presse, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 2JJJ, Penny Beaumont, Sheila Draper, Don Bennetts, Gerry Errante, Steven Feld, Lynne Hamilton (of Prowling Tiger Press in Melbourne, who published "West Papua: Follow the Morning Star" by Ben Bohane, Jim Elmslie and Liz Thompson, an inspiring book of superb texts and photographs), David Kirkland, Jonny Lewis, Robert Lowry ("Shall We Gather at the River?"), Jonathon Mustard, SBS News, Edward Smith and Alice Wesley-Smith - my thanks to all these plus to all those whose names I don't know or contact addresses I can't find. Apologies to those whose names have been inadvertently omitted. Thanks, too, to David Bridie, Louise Byrne, Andrew Kilvert and Rob Wesley-Smith. Two other books provided valuable information: Jim Elmslie's "Irian Jaya Under the Gun" (Crawford House Publishing (Australia) Pty Ltd) and Peter King's "West Papua Since Suharto" (University of New South Wales Press). I used the beautiful West Papuan anthem Hai Tanah Ku Papua. Flags, used with permission, came from http://www.theodora.com/flags. Most of the bird of paradise paintings were by Rowan Ellis (1848-1922). Finally, thanks to Ros Dunlop for commissioning the piece. And, for funding assistance, to the Music Board of the Australia Council, the Australian Government's arts funding and advisory body.

On the way home from the tour I gave a composers' seminar at the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts.

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Sept 20 2005: Tim Kain, of Guitar Trek, says that the premiere - in New Zealand - of my piece Songs and Marches, for guitar quartet, went very well, receiving an enthusiastic response from the audience. Here's the program note:

An old Andalusian ud melody - incorporated into Arab music in the 12th century - is attacked by snippets of the national anthems of some of the "Coalition of the Willing". A merry-go-round theme is heard ("here we go again, around and around ..."), then, later, a couple of Hitler Youth songs and marches. These sound surprisingly good - but then they wouldn't work as propaganda if they didn't! As Noel Coward said, "Aaaah, the potency of cheap music!" At the end, the ud melody returns, sadly beautiful, licking its wounds. Some may care to see a political theme in this piece; others may simply enjoy the rollicking tunes and the superb artistry of Guitar Trek, who commissioned the piece with financial assistance from the Music Board of the Australia Council, the Federal Government's arts funding and advisory body.

next performance: Sat Nov 19 2005, Blue Mountains Music Society, Springwood, New South Wales

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* Sept 14 2005: Saw the following review by Joel Crotty in The Age, Sept 14 2005, of a Sept 12 concert by Charisma at Fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne:

Sydney-based new music duo Charisma - Roslyn Dunlop (clarinets) and Julia Ryder (cello) - presented material from J. S Bach to a new commission from Melbourne sound artist Ros Bandt. It concentrated on the multimedia works of Martin Wesley-Smith. The program featured Wesley-Smith's strong social justice commentaries on the Iraq war, East Timor and Afghanistan, Weapons of Mass Distortion for clarinet and CD Rom. It is a clever piece that weaves Lewis Carroll-type phrases and imagery around the issue of Iraq. The Wonderland of Carroll collides with contemporary political sound-grabs to vividly push home the almost surreal nature of propaganda. Tekee Tokee Tomak and Merry-Go-Round are responses to the wars in East Timor and Afghanistan respectively. The soundtrac to beautiful photographs depicting proud people going about their everyday activities, but with the scars of war apparent, includes traditional themes, Western popular music and abstract sonic canvases that sometimes incorporates the nearly forgotten early '80s synthesiser sound. After interval, the tone quietened with Bandt's Blue/Gold for clarinets, cello and DVD, a multimedia work mapping the sound artist's response to the environment. The piece quietly alternates between the nature of wet and dry: images of water and deserts play off against Bandt's music, which displays a strong tendency towards a medieval soundscape.

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* Sept 6 2005: Went to Canberra yesterday to hear the guitar quartet Guitar Trek rehearse my piece Songs and Marches. I was delighted! They're an excellent group, handling the difficult bits with ease and giving the piece a deliciously funky feel I hadn't quite anticipated. They will premiere it in Wellington, NZ, on Monday Sept 12.

On Saturday Sept 3 I presented the Third Kangaroo Valley Buster Keaton Silent Film Festival, with pianist Robert Constable brilliantly accompanying two Keaton films and one by Charlie Chaplin. The event raised nearly $2000 for projects in East Timor.

In the meantime I'm working on Papua Merdeka, a multimedia piece for bass clarinet & computer about West Papua.

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* August 26 2005: Participated last night in an East Timor fund-raiser at Leichhardt Town Hall, Sydney. Clarinettist/bass clarinettist Ros Dunlop performed Welcome to the Hotel Turismo and Tekee Tokee Tomak, and several new East Timor videos were shown.

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* August 20 2005: FIRE! Strange smell this morning, which I couldn't locate. Thought it might've been some off food, but couldn't find anything. Then Peter saw smoke in his bedroom and discovered that the bed in my daughter Olivia's room was smouldering, producing acrid smoke making it hard to breathe and to see. I eventually managed, after several attempts, to get in and turn the power off. Then the mattress burst into flames six feet high. I was throwing buckets of water in there while Peter hosed everything down ... eventually we put it out - phew! Thought for a moment there that the house would go. Everything's a mess, and the place stinks, but WE SAVED THE DAY! And the house. But not Olivia's files, which were under the bed. Some other things too. Still, we were very lucky. It was the flamin' (literally) electric blanket, of course - they're a death trap ... yes, need smoke detectors, and a fire extinguisher that works (ours didn't), and one should pull the plug of one's electric blanket out of the wall when one is not using it. A fire truck from the Beaumont Volunteer Fire Service came after the event to check things - all OK.

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* July 22 2005: The Kangaroo Valley-Remexio Partnership, of which I'm a member, is planning its Third Kangaroo Valley Buster Keaton Film Festival for 7.30pm Sat Sept 3 2005. Click here for details.

Clarinettist Ros Dunlop performed two multimedia pieces of mine, including Weapons of Mass Distortion, in Tokyo in August.

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* July 11 2005: Am planning, with clarinettist Ros Dunlop, the 2005 Tekee Tokee Tomak Tour to Europe & the USA - see the tour web-site here.

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* June 25 2005: 60th birthday concerts and party now all over. To mark the occasion The Song Company did a brilliant concert in Kangaroo Valley Hall on Sat June 11, repeating it in The Studio, Sydney Opera House, on Wed June 15; program: Quito, doublethink and a selection of songs. Read reviews etc here.

On June 11, in Kangaroo Valley, NSW, and on June 15 in The Studio at the Sydney Opera House, the Song Company presented Brothers in Crime, a celebration of the 60th birthday of Martin and Peter Wesley Smith (the valley is their home). What the concert brought home is not only the affection and respect for the brothers in the musical community, but the totality of their vision-accessible, direct, sometimes satirical, often overtly political works drawing on popular musical idioms and pushing them to new levels of complexity. The first half of the concert came from their powerful 1994 music theatre work, Quito, not only an indictment of Australia's mishandling of East Timorese refugees in the 80s and 90s but prophetic of our government's subsequent cruelties to refugees from other countries. The remainder of the concert included a range of works new and old that entertained and enlightened with their gentle wit, whimsy and droll barbs, all done justice by the Song Company. Keith Gallasch in RealTime, RT69 (Oct/Nov 05)

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* May 14 2005: Peter and I did an interview with Julie Simonds on 2MBS-FM for subsequent broadcast. During the interview she announced that she had a surprise for us: "And now, listeners, we're about to hear the first broadcast of the first performance and recording of a new piece dedicated to Martin and Peter Wesley-Smith; it's called Kangaroo Valley Blues, it's by Ross Edwards, and it's played on piano by Ian Munro"!

I was stunned. It's a great little piece, beautifully played. Ross wrote it for us as a gift for our forthcoming "significant" birthday, which will be "celebrated", if that's the word (achieving yet another age milestone doesn't seem like a cause for celebration, although of course it is), with two special concerts in June - see below.

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* May 11 2005: Finished, finally, a piece for The Song Company that I've been working on for a while. It's called doublethink, and I'm cautiously pleased with it. I think. Words by Peter Wesley-Smith. It will be premiered at the Song Company concerts of our stuff in Kangaroo Valley (June 11) and the Sydney Opera House (June 15). Enquiries: call 02 9351 7939. To book for the Kangaroo Valley concert ($25/conc $15) call 02 9251 1600; for bookings for the Opera House concert ($35/conc $25), call 02 9250 7777.

doublethink is about propaganda, official lies, and the power of the image - how one image (e.g. the hooded man at Abu Ghraib) can undo years of expensive state propaganda (does the truth prevail, finally?)

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* May 8 2005: Attended a recording session in which cellist David Pereira played a piece I wrote for him in 2000: Welcome to the Hotel Turismo, for cello & CD. I've heard various wonderful performances of this piece (most notably by Julia Ryder and Rachel Scott as well as by David himself). This performance was superb: thoughtful, mature, at times overwhelmingly sad, but beautiful ... It will be released on CD later this year by Tall Poppies.

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* April 28 2005: I recently attended a workshop with The Song Company on the new piece - doublethink - that Peter and I are writing for them. What a fantastic group! Sitting in their middle as they sing divinely is as close to Heaven that I'll ever get! (well ... almost, anyway).

Tickets for The Song Company's all-Wesley-Smith concerts in Kangaroo Valley (Sat June 11) and The Studio, Sydney Opera House (Wed June 15) are selling well - call (02) 9351 7939 to make a booking. photo, taken May 3 2005, by Belinda Webster of Peter (left) and Martin Wesley-Smith:

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* April 12 2005: The première performance, and broadcast, of A Luta Continua happened in Hobart on April 2: marvellous! For a report and a review ("The audience erupted into noisy accolades ... a lively work ... dazzling blocks of syncopated sound"), see here. After the performance I spent a few days driving around the South Island of New Zealand: nice!

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* March 2005: Excitement (well, mine, anyway) is building towards the première of A Luta Continua in Hobart on April 2. The singers (Andrew Collis, baritone, Pip Monk, soprano, and the Ogilvie High School Concert Choir) are busy learning it, with most apparently enjoying it, and tickets are selling fast (actually, I don't know this, but if they're not then they should be). ABC-FM at one stage indicated that they would be broadcasting the performance live. Details will be posted here.

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* Feb 20 2005: Have recently had a piano piece - Griff's Riffs - published in the AMEB (Australian Music Examinations Board) "Popular Piano Syllabus" Grade 5 "Piano for Leisure" book. For enquiries click here.

My song I'm a Caterpillar of Society (Not a Social Butterfly), which appears in both Who Killed Cock Robin? and Boojum!, has been published in the ABC's The 2005 Sing! Book (www.abc.net.au/learn/sing).

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* Feb 16 2005: Have been hunting through hard disks for songs from which The Song Company will choose for their Sat June 11 (Kangaroo Valley) and Wed June 15 (The Studio, Sydney Opera House) Brothers in Crime concerts later this year. The first half of each concert will consist of a new production of the multimedia piece Quito. After interval there'll be a 40-minute bracket of songs (serious, light, children's, funny, sad etc), followed by the new piece, doublethink, that Peter and I are working on right now.

enquiries: call (02) 9351 7939

read more here (click on "concerts")

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* Jan 31 2005: Have finished A Luta Continua, for baritone, girls' choir and orchestra, commissioned by Symphony Australia for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and scheduled to be premiered on April 2 at the Ten Days on the Island festival, Federation Concert Hall, Hobart, Tasmania. See here for info. 31 or so minutes long, with a text by Peter Wesley-Smith, it's about East Timor. The first section sets to music some of the defence speech Xanana Gusmão made at his trial after he was captured by Indonesian troops in 1992. The performers: Andrew Collis, baritone, the Ogilvie High School Concert Choir (Joan Wright, musical director, and Pip Monk, soprano), and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Mills.

for more information, and to read Peter's text, click here

It really was quite amazing. The creativity was striking ... the night was a tour de force of cooperative creativity - incredible when one reflects that the whole night emerged from the human mind ... ideas and energy ... it was brilliant to assimilate the KV community into Keaton's slapstick. I loved the written quips between scenes and the masterstroke of fusing film and reality ... plus the plus of live music. Terrific to make it an annual event.

and

Terry, the dummies were just incredible ... such a lot of work and spectacular results. Martin, who'd have thought such a creative mind could not only direct but pull off such a smooth and well-oiled performance? The bats were a touch of genius and trained in such a short time. It all went so well and was such a pleasure to sit back and watch. And Peter, such profound and provoking words ... I recognized your genius all over that dirty movie. Congrats to you all. Laugh? Thought I'd never stop ...

* Sat June 14 2003: wrote and performed a 50th birthday song for Chris Nobel and her twin brother Ross (singer/songwriter/composer/keyboardist extraordinaire), Kangaroo Valley Hall, Kangaroo Valley; lyric by Peter Wesley-Smith

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* June 10 2003: ABC-FM played my children's song Noises [lyric by Peter Wesley-Smith]. The station now regularly plays children's songs of mine recorded by The Song Company.

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* June 1 2003: accepted an appointment as a Patron of A Just Australia - Australians for Just Refugee Programs

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* Sun May 11 2003: received an e-mail from Noel Ancell, Artistic Director of the Australian Boys Choral Institute, saying that the Australian Boys Choir and The Vocal Consort performed the complete Who Killed Cock Robin? in a concert of Australian choral music at the Iwaki Auditorium of the ABC's Southbank Centre in Melbourne on Saturday May 10:

it went very well and was much enjoyed by the audience (and the choirs, of course!)

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* Tues May 13 2003: gave a lecture on Quito for the Music Department, University of Sydney; subsequently received this from one of the students:

I found your lecture/demonstration inspiring and informative. I really liked your use of mixed media - you use it well to put your message across ... since then I have been listening to the Tall Poppies CD of Quito and I am finding it ... just amazing. On first listen I was surprised (the use of electronic media and samples, the 'odd' harmonies/chord choices ...) and I gradually eased myself into it. Now I am enthralled and moved by this work.

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* Have received a grant from the Music Board of the Australia Council to compose a multimedia work for clarinet or marimba & CD-ROM; called, tentatively, Weapons of Mass Distortion (working title), and using images from far and wide, especially photographs by George Gittoes, it is due to be finished by Sept 18 2003 to be premiered in Darwin.

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* May 2003: received an e-mail from a Sydney secondary school teacher:

One of my Year 12 students has submitted an essay describing characteristics of a purported work by you called XXXX composed 1997 for flute and stripper. I have been unable to find any mention of this work on the AMC site or indeed your own website.

Er, not my piece, I'm afraid! Sounds like a great idea, though - if anyone knows of a suitable stripper interested in a lowly-paid (i.e. "art") gig, let me know and I'll start on the music rightaway.

later: since then I've been informed (thanks, Janet!) that XXXX is a work by Australian composer Stephen Cronin, it's for singer (male or female) and flute, and it was performed at the 1999 Australian Flute Convention by Robert Dick and Kathleen Gallagher (Kathleen has played my piece Balibo).

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* Thurs April 10 2003: gave a concert, with Charisma, of Merry-Go-Round and Tekee Tokee Tomak, and pieces by Morton Gould, Hindemith, Steve Ingham & Howard Skempton, at Tap Gallery, 1/278 Palmer St, Darlinghurst, Sydney. Went well.

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* Thurs March 27 2003: gave a talk, with Peter Wesley-Smith, to a group of people in Newcastle, New South Wales, who are interested in setting up an organisation similar to the Kangaroo Valley-Remexio Partnership, which Peter and I both support.

Interested in supporting East Timor? Cash donations, proceeds from fund-raising events, and musical instruments, are urgently needed and will be greatly appreciated (send to Kangaroo Valley-Remexio Partnership, PO Kangaroo Valley NSW 2577 Australia). For more information, contact Libby Turnock on 02 4465 1357 or by e-mail.

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* March 24 2003: gave a concert and discussion at Newtown High School for the Performing Arts, Mon March 24 2003, with clarinettist Ros Dunlop and cellist Julia Ryder; the program included Tekee Tokee Tomak and Merry-Go-Round.

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* Tues March 11 2003: gave a composition class at SCEGGS (Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School), Redlands; from SCEGGS:

Just a note of thanks for the other day. The students really enjoyed it and it opened up their thinking in many ways, both technically and in the power of music to express ideas.

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* Thurs March 6 2003: gave a talk - Social Awareness Through Music - delivered to Kincoppal School's School Assembly, Sydney; Ros Dunlop and I presented Tekee Tokee Tomak and the first section of Merry-Go-Round. I am enormously impressed by this Catholic girls' school's commitment to confronting and discussing major world issues and the support it has shown to various disadvantaged groups, including the people of East Timor.

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* Jan-Feb 2003: embarked on a concert tour of the UK and Hong Kong with clarinettist Ros Dunlop (see report). We presented concerts, master classes etc in Manchester, Kent, Reading, Liverpool, Glasgow, Oxford, Kingston, York, London and Hong Kong. Before returning to Australia, I taught for three days at the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts, where the excellent composition course is run by Clarence Mak. Three of my East Timor audio-visual pieces were performed on the tour - X, Welcome to the Hotel Turismo and Tekee Tokee Tomak - plus a clarinet-only version of Merry-Go-Round.

From William Brooks, University of York, Feb 26 2003:

a fine show, provocative and skilled, and there have been ongoing mutters amongst the postgrads about art, politics, propaganda, and The Whole Damn Thing ever since you left

from a review of our London concert by Carmel Budiardjo:

The clarinetists Ros Dunlop and Natascha Briger performed superbly well and the combination of sound and visuals worked extremely well in helping to give the compositions greater depth and to appeal to a very mixed audience ... artistically rewarding and a powerful tribute to the courageous people of East Timor.

click here for a review of this concert in Clarinet & Saxophone journal

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* Jan 2003: completed Tekee Tokee Tomak, for clarinet & CD-ROM, with images taken in East Timor by various photographers including Ros Dunlop, Kathryn Morgan, Alice Wesley-Smith and Martin Wesley-Smith, was premiered in Manchester, England, in January 2003. It has since been performed many times, by clarinettist Ros Dunlop, in other parts of England, Glasgow, Hong Kong, Sydney and the USA.

from Stumblings in the Dark, by Peter Hollo, Oct 15 2000:

The last piece, written in 2000, was a new commission by the wonderful and delightful Australian composer Martin Wesley-Smith called "fin/début". Commissioned, obviously, to represent in some way the turn of the millenium, the piece combined M W-S's usual humour and cleverness with a beautiful maturity that really impressed and moved the listeners (at least those with open enough minds). The last movement was multi-media, with a CD-ROM playing a beautifully vocodered computer voice and animated text on a screen behind the players; there was frequent quotation from both the previous works among many others ... As well as being a fantastic composer (one of my favourite Australian composers, along with Nigel Westlake) and a pioneer of computer music in Australia (he was using Fairlight synthesisers - really early digital sampling musical instruments - way back in the '70s, and founded the seminal computer music/audio-visual group watt in 1976), Martin is a tireless campaigner for a free East Timor. He and his two brothers (Peter, a lawyer and law scholar who writes or co-writes dazzlingly witty, clever and poignant librettos for Martin, and Rob, a political activist and agricultural scientist) have been involved with human rights campaigning in East Timor since the mid-'70s, well before it had any mainstream media attention; they also direct their considerable talents and energy to environmental causes and other human rights issues ... Totally legendary family. Go check out Martin's webpages and buy his CDs!

click here for the Boojum! web-site